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Afternoon Delight! Dir Arvin Chen Country of origin Taiwan One of Taiwan’s most promising young film-makers, Arvin Chen’s debut feature Au Revoir Taipei was executive produced by Wim Wenders and won the NETPAC Asian Film Award at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. Chen was also one of 10 Taiwanese directors to contribute shorts to last year’s portmanteau feature 10+10. Like his first film, Afternoon Delight! is a Taipei-set romantic comedy, but this time the emphasis will be on drama and character interaction — as opposed to the slick and stylish visuals of Au Revoir Taipei. Chen was inspired to write Afternoon Delight! after hearing about a recent Taiwanese trend for gay men and women who came out of the closet as young adults to revert to straight lives in order to get married and have children. The story’s central character is a middle-class 39-yearold married father, whose decision to turn his back on his gay past is called into question when he encounters a handsome young flight attendant. Chen believes the film is less about being gay than about how a man makes life choices and deals with conflicts, the pursuit of love, age and responsibility. He plans to cast a well-known Taiwanese singer in the lead role. One Production Film Company’s Lee Lieh describes the project as “distinct” from Au Revoir Taipei. “It is a warmer and more mature story and a new challenge for Arvin, and it’s the main reason I wanted to work with him,” says Lieh, who is also showcasing City Of The Lost Things at HAF. Currently in pre-production, shooting on Afternoon Delight! is scheduled for this summer. Lee is confident she will be able to secure funding for the film in Taiwan, but is hoping to meet potential buyers and distributors here at HAF. Sen-lun Yu Afternoon Delight! Budget $850,000 Finance raised to date None Contact Lee Lieh, One Production Film Company leelieh329@yahoo.com.tw n 10 Screen International at Filmart March 21, 2012 You’re A Big Girl Now Dir Tze Chun Country of origin US-Malaysia Chinese-American film-maker Tze Chun made a big impression with his debut feature Children Of Invention, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009, going on to win awards at 17 film festivals and gaining rave reviews in the US following its theatrical release. His follow up, You’re A Big Girl Now, is based on the life of his mother, who grew up in a Singaporean brothel in the 1950s, escaping to Hong Kong with the help of an older prostitute, finally saving enough money to attend university in the US before returning to Singapore to find her biological parents. “It was a very emotional experience researching and writing the story. I hope the audience can also feel deeply the emotional journey in the story,” says Chun, who has spent two years working on the project, accumulating more than 30 hours of audio/video interviews. Visually, Chun plans to combine the cinema vérité style with beautiful cinematography. “I hope it will look like the film Babel, which feels real yet also contains a strong story,” says the director, who compares the project to the 1970s US television series Roots in which characters struggle to escape slavery in a bid to pursue freedom. Chun is reuniting on the project with New York-based Mynette Louie of Syncopated Films, who produced Children Of Invention. Louie also co-produced Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation and operated as a consulting producer on Olivia Silver’s Arcadia. The $2m You’re A Big Girl Now has already received $5,000 from Sundance Creative Producing Lab. Tze is revising the script and hopes to secure funding as well as co-production partners at HAF. Sen-lun Yu You’re A Big Girl Now Budget $2m Finance raised to date $5,000 from Sundance Creative Producing Lab Contact Mynette Louie, Syncopated Films mynette@syncopatedfilms.com Balloon Dir Pema Tseden Country of origin China Tibetan film-maker Pema Tseden’s first three features — The Silent Holy Stones, The Search and Old Dog — focused on the conflict between tradition and foreign cultures in modern Tibet. With his latest project, Balloon, Pema intends to dig deeper into the Tibetan family, exploring one particular family’s clash between their religious faith and the Chinese government’s family-planning policy, which restricts the number of children permitted. “The conflicts between religious faith and contemporary lives are sharper and sharper in today’s Tibetan society. This is deeply affecting children or teenagers in Tibet. They are losing the guidelines in life and can become very confused,” explains Pema, whose The Silent Holy Stones picked up the prize for best directorial debut at the 2005 Golden Rooster Awards. He went on to win the special jury prize for The Search at the Bangkok International Film Festival in 2009 and the Golden Digital Award for Old Dog at the Hong Kong International Film Festival last year. Pema plans to shoot Balloon in a documentary style, using non-professional actors recruited from Tibet and Tibetan regions of China. He wants to use locations including his home town of Amdo, in the Qinghai province, in order to convey a sense of the true spirit of contemporary Tibet. He is currently revising the script, which was selected for the 14th Screenplay Development Fund at the Amiens International Film Festival in 2009. Sangye Gyamtso, who produced Pema’s The Silent Holy Stones and Old Dog, is on board as producer of the $400,000 Balloon, which has already received $150,000 from Beijing Himalaya Audio & Visual Culture Communication. Shooting is scheduled to start in spring 2013. Sen-lun Yu Balloon Budget $400,000 Finance raised to date $150,000 from Beijing Himalaya Audio & Visual Culture Communication Contact Sangye Gyamtso, Beijing Himalaya Audio & Visual Culture Communication tibetmovie@126.com
elephant soldiers Dirs Vardan Hovhannisyan, Inna Sahakyan Country of origin Armenia Armenian co-directors Vardan Hovhannisyan and Inna Sahakyan have worked together at Bars Media Documentary Film Studio in Armenia for more than eight years, where their credits include A Story Of People In War And Peace and The Last Tightrope Dancer In Armenia, both of which were picked up by international broadcasters. Their latest feature-doc explores the near-genocidal rise in elephant poaching fuelled by demand for ivory in Asia, focusing on the work of Space For Giants, a conservation project set up in Kenya by Max Graham. “He is extraordinary,” says Sahakyan about Graham, who uses GPS technology to track the poachers. “He is huge… he looks like a big, strong elephant.” When it comes to their films, the duo tend to switch roles, with one producing while the other directs. “But this time we are very much involved in the story,” Sahakyan says of their HAF project, for which they already have around $19,000 of their $390,000 budget in place. Swedish broadcaster SVT has boarded the project and the film-makers have some Armenian backing. Their previous work has been seen largely on TV but they feel this project has potential for a theatrical release. As a result, there are likely to be two versions of Elephant Soldiers: a 52-minute edit for TV and a feature-length cut. With a few days shooting completed, the aim is to attract support from broadcasters, funds, distributors and co-producers. “We are searching for all kinds of co-financing,” Sahakyan says of their goals in Hong Kong. Geoffrey Macnab elephant soldiers Budget $390,000 Finance raised to date $19,000 through Bars Media and SVT Contact Vardan Hovhannisyan, Bars Media Documentary Film Studio vardan@barsmedia.am imperial exam Dir Tan Chui Mui Country of origin China Malaysia-born Tan Chui Mui burst onto the scene in 2006 when her first feature, Love Conquers All, won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the New Currents Award at Busan. Having moved to Beijing two years ago, she returns with her first mainland Chinese project, a period comedy about China’s imperial exam system which theoretically allowed anyone in China to take an exam to become an aristocrat. The idea for the film began with an argument in which Tan was trying to explain to a European friend why there is such cultural uniformity in China. “There is a very interesting and unique background to the story — the exam system, the rules, the venues and the people who spent their whole life taking the exams. I don’t think there has been a film made about it,” says Tan who has co-written the script with Taiwanese author Chang Ta-chuen. Based loosely on Chinese novel The Scholars, the film takes place in the 17th century and centres around a young scholar who, while travelling to attend the imperial exam in Beijing, encounters a blind knight, an orphan girl and a teahouse owner, making him realise he would rather be a peasant. Tan plans to shoot in Nanjing City, to take advantage of a well-preserved ancient imperial-exam venue. The project is at the script stage, with film-maker Jia Zhangke producing for his company Xstream Pictures, which has put up half the budget. Jia and Tan are looking for co-producers on the film, which is likely to include A-list Chinese actors to boost its commercial appeal. Sen-lun Yu imperial exam Budget $6.35m Finance raised to date $3.175m from Xstream Pictures Contact Eva Lam, Xstream Pictures evalam267@163.com The enemy — 1949 Dir Chang Tso-chi Country of origin Taiwan Renowned for his humanist stories about people from the lower end of the social ladder, such as the 2010 Golden Horse winner When Love Comes and 2001’s The Best Of Times, Taiwanese director Chang Tso-chi makes an about-turn with his latest project, a humorous film about the absurdity of war. Unsure whether to make the film as a 30-minute short or a feature, Chang shot a 10-minute test version last year. When the project was chosen as one of 10 chapters for Taiwanese portmanteau feature 10+10, he decided to turn it into a feature. Chang has recruited veteran scriptwriter Hsiao Yeh to co-write the script, which is set in 1949 during the Chinese Civil War. It focuses on a local conflict involving a fisherman and his son from Kinmen Island who are stuck in the rival neighbouring city of Xiamen after it is taken over by the People’s Liberation Army. “The absurdity between Kinmen and Xiamen is that they were so close to each other, and people’s lives were so related, but they were enemies for almost half a century. During the war, a lot of local people did not know who to fight for,” says Chang, who will focus on the way ordinary people coped with the situation while delivering “a real war film with brutal and vivid battle scenes”. Chang is producing through his outfit Chang Tso Chi Film Studio, which has already put up $500,000 of the film’s $3.3m budget. Currently in pre-production, Chang hopes to attract international and mainland China partners, especially support from the Xiamen city government. Sen-lun Yu The enemy — 1949 Budget $3.3m Finance raised to date $500,000 through Chang Tso Chi Film Studio Contact Chang Tso Chi Film Studio changtsochi@gmail.com lost in Poetry Dir Fridrik Thor Fridriksson Country of origin Iceland HAF ProFiles East meets west in the new project by Iceland’s maverick writer-producer-director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson. Set in China, Italy and Iceland, Lost In Poetry is inspired by a real-life incident in which Chairman Mao asked Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni to make a documentary about China. Fridriksson’s fictional film is about a group of children who appeared in the documentary and decide some years later to make their own film about Antonioni, taking them to the Italian island of Stromboli. The main character is a film-maker whose wife is in Iceland during the Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruption of 2010 and who disappears, just as a woman does in Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960). Fridriksson, who has made more than 30 features including Children Of Nature in 1992 for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, compares his latest project to Cold Fever, another of his films, which takes place in Japan and Italy. If Iceland’s most prolific film-maker has been less prominent than usual on the international market and festival scene in recent years, it is because he was working on documentary A Mother’s Courage (2010) about autistic children, narrated by Kate Winslet. But Fridriksson is back and hopes to shoot Lost In Poetry in 2013. He will produce for his company Icelandic Film Corporation, together with Anna Maria Karlsdottir, with plans to finance the project through Scandinavian film funds and possibly Eurimages. Fridriksson will be looking to attach co-producers including Chinese partners at HAF. Geoffrey Macnab lost in Poetry Budget $1.6m Finance raised to date $807,755 from Icelandic national funds Contact Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Icelandic Film Corporation f.thor@icecorp.is March 21, 2012 Screen International at Filmart 11 n
Page 3 and 4: DAY 3 www.ScreenDaily.com Editorial
Page 6: REVIEWS Reviews edited by Mark Adam
Page 9: The Fourth Direction Dir Gurvinder
Page 13 and 14: NEW EOF TITLES SELECTED 2012 Regula
Page 16 and 17: The place to fi nd an international
Page 18 and 19: scReenings edited by paul lindsell
Page 20 and 21: Meeting Room N111-N112, HKCEC PEtal
Page 22 and 23: EvEnts SeminarS and eventS WedneSda

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